The opalescent light from the bronze electric lamp on the mahogany
writing table disclosed two gentlemen, whose attitudes and expressions
left no doubt as to the serious import of their discussion. At the same
time the _membra disjecta_ of afternoon tea which remained upon the teak
tabaret, together with the still smoking butt of an Egyptian cigarette
distilling its incense in a steadily perpendicular gray column toward
the ceiling from a jade jar used as an ash receiver, showed that for one
of them at least the situation had admitted of physical amelioration.
The gentleman beside the table had rested his high, narrow forehead upon
the delicate fingers of his left hand, and with contracted eyebrows was
gazing in a baffled manner toward his companion, who had extended his
limbs at length before the heavy chair in which he reclined, and with
his elbows upon its arms was holding his finger tips lightly against
each other before his face. To those who knew Ashley Flynt this meant
that the last word had been spoken, and that nothing remained but to
accept the situation as he stated it and follow his advice.
His heavy yet shrewd countenance, whose florid hue bespoke a modern
adjustment of golf to a more traditional use of port, had that cold,
vacant look which it displayed when the mind behind the mask had
recorded Q. E. D. beneath its unseen demonstration. The gentleman at
the table twitched his shoulders nervously, slowly raised his head, and
leaned back into his chair.
"And you say that there is absolutely nothing which can be done?" he
repeated mechanically.
"I have already told you, Sir Richard," replied Flynt in even, incisive
tones, "that the last day of grace expires to-morrow. Unless the three
notes are immediately taken up you will be forced into bankruptcy. Your
property and expectations are already mortgaged for more than they are
worth. Your assets of every sort will not return your creditors--I
should say your creditor--fifteen per cent. Seventy-nine thousand
pounds, principal and interest--can you raise it or even a substantial
part of it? No, not five thousand! You have no choice, so far as I can
see, but to go into bankruptcy, unless--" He hesitated rather
deprecatingly.
"Well!" cried Sir Richard impatiently, "unless----"
"Unless you marry."
The baronet drew himself up and a flush crept into his cheeks and across
his forehead.
"As your legal adviser," continued Flynt unperturbed, "I give it as my
opinion that your only alternative to bankruptcy is a suitable marriage.
Of course, for a man of your position in society a mere engagement might
be enough to----"
Sir Richard sprang quickly to his feet and stepped in front of his
solicitor.
"To induce the money lenders to advance the amount necessary to put me
on my feet? Bah! Flynt, how dare you make such a suggestion! If you were
not my solicitor--Good heavens, that I should ever be brought to this!"
Flynt shrugged his shoulders.
"So far as that goes, bankruptcy is the cheapest way to pay one's
debts."
His client uttered an ejaculation of disgust. Then suddenly the red
deepened in his cheeks and he clenched his white hand until the thin
blue veins stood out like cords.
"Curse him!" he cried in a voice shaken by anger. "Curse him now and
hereafter! Why did I ever take advantage of his pretended generosity? He
meant to ruin me! Why was I ever born with tastes that I could not
afford to gratify? Why must I surround myself with music and flowers and
marbles? He saw his chance, stimulated my extravagance, seduced my
intellect, and now he casts me into the street a beggar! How I hate him!
I believe I could _kill_ him!"
Sir Richard turned quickly. The door had opened to admit the silent,
deferential figure of Joyce, the butler.
"Pardon me, Sir Richard. A clerk from Mr. Flynt's office, sir, with a
package. Shall I let him in?"
Mortmain still stood with his fist trembling in mid-air, and it was a
moment before he regained sufficient control of himself to reply:
"Yes, yes; let him in."
The butler nodded to some one just behind him, and a nondescript,
undersized man cringingly entered the room and stood hesitatingly by the
threshold.
"Have you the papers, Flaggs?" inquired Flynt.
"Here, sir," replied the other, drawing forth a bundle tied with red
tape and handing it to his employer.
"Very good. You need not return to the office. Good night."
"Good night, sir. Thank you, sir," mumbled Flaggs, and casting a
furtive, beetling glance in the direction of Sir Richard, he shambled
out.
The solicitor followed him with his eye until the door had closed behind
him, and then shrugged his shoulders for the second time.
"My dear Sir Richard," he remarked, "many of our most distinguished
peers have gone through bankruptcy. It will all be the same a year
hence. Society will be as glad as ever to receive you. Your name will
command the same respect and likely enough the same credit. Bankruptcy
is still eminently respectable. As for Lord Russell--try to forget him.
It is enough that you owe him the money."
Mortmain's anger had been followed by the reaction of despair. Now he
groped for a cigarette, and, drawing a jeweled match box from his
pocket, lit it with trembling fingers.
Flynt arose.
"That's right!" he exclaimed; "just be sensible about it. Meet me
to-morrow at my office at ten o'clock and we will call in Lord Russell's
solicitors for a consultation. It will be amicable enough, I assure you.
Well, I must be off. Good night." He extended his hand, but Mortmain had
thrust his own into his trousers' pockets.
"And you say nothing can prevent this?"
"Why, yes," returned Flynt in a sarcastic tone; "I believe two things
can do so."
"Indeed," inquired Sir Richard. "What may they be?"
Flynt had stepped impatiently to the door, which he now held half open.
Sir Richard had failed to send him a draft for his last bill.
"A fire from heaven to consume the notes--coupled with the death of Lord
Russell--or your own. Good night!"
The door closed abruptly and Sir Richard Mortmain was left alone.
"The death of Lord Russell or my own!" he repeated with a harsh laugh.
"Agreeable fellow, Flynt!" Then the bitter smile died out of his face
and the lines hardened. Over on the heavy onyx mantel, between two
grotesque bronze Chinese vases from whose ponderous sides dragons with
bristling teeth and claws writhed to escape, a Sèvres clock chimed six,
and was echoed by a dim booming from the outer hall.
Mortmain glanced with regret about the little den that typified so
perfectly the futility of his luxurious existence. The deadened walls
admitted hardly a suggestion of the traffic outside. By a flower-set
window the open piano still held the score of "Madame Butterfly," the
opening performance of which he was to attend that evening with Lady
Bella Forsythe. A bunch of lilies of the valley stood at his elbow upon
the massive table that never bore anything upon its polished surface but
an ancient manuscript, an etching, or a vase of flowers. Delicate
cabinets showed row upon row of grotesque Capodimonte, rare Sèvres and
Dresden porcelains, jade, and other examples of ceramic art. Two
Rembrandts, a Corot, and a profile by Whistler occupied the wall space.
The mantel was given over to a few choice antique bronzes, covered with
verdigris. The only concession to modern utilitarianism was an extension
telephone standing upon a bracket in the corner behind the fireplace.
The sole surviving member of his family, Mortmain had inherited from
his father, Sir Mortimer, a discriminating intellect and artistic
tastes, united with a gentle, engaging, and unambitious disposition,
derived from his Italian mother. Carelessly indifferent to his social
inferiors, or those whom he regarded as such, he was brilliantly
entertaining with his equals--a man of moods, conservative in habit, yet
devoted to society, expensive in his mode of life, given to
hospitality--and a spendthrift. These qualities combined to make him
caviare to the general, an enigma to the majority, and the favorite of
the few, whose favorite he desired to be. He had never married, for his
calculation and his laziness had jumped together to convince him that he
could be more comfortable, more independent, and more free to pursue his
music and kindred tastes, if single. Altogether, Sir Richard, though
perhaps a trifle selfish, was by no means a bad fellow, and one whose
temperament fitted him to be what he was--a leader in matters of taste,
a connoisseur, and an esteemed member of the gay world.
No doubt, as Flynt had suggested, he could have liberated himself
financially by donning the golden shackles of an aristocratic marital
slavery. But his soul revolted at the thought of marrying for money, not
only at the moral aspect of it, but because a certain individual
tranquillity had become necessary to his mode of life. He was forty and
a creature of habit. A conventional marriage would be as intolerable as
earning his living. On the other hand, the odium of a bankruptcy
proceeding, the publicity, the vulgarity of it, and the loss of prestige
and position which it would necessarily involve brought him face to face
with the only alternative which Flynt had flung at him in parting--the
death of Lord Russell or his own.
He had known that without being told. Months before, the silver-mounted
pistol which was to round out his consistently inconsistent existence
had been concealed among the linen in the bureau of his Louis XV
bedroom, but it was to be invoked only when no other course remained.
That nothing else did remain was clear. Flynt had read his client's
sentence in that brutally unconscious jest.
On the day of his interview with Flynt he was one of the most highly
regarded critics of music and art in London, and his own brilliant
accomplishments as a virtuoso had been supplemented by a lavish
generosity toward struggling painters and musicians who found easy
access to his purse and table, if not to his heart.
He had introduced Drausche, the Austrian pianist, to the musical world
at a heavy financial loss and had made several costly donations to the
British Museum, in addition to which his collection of scarabs was one
of the most complete on record and demanded constant replenishing to
keep up to date. His expensive habits had required money and plenty of
it, and when his patrimony had been exhausted he had mortgaged his
expectations in his uncle's estate to launch the Austrian genius. It had
been a lamentable failure. Mortmain's friends had said plainly enough
that Drausche could play no better than his patron. This of itself
implied no mean talent, but the public had resolutely refused to pay
five shillings a ticket to hear the pianist, and the money was gone. Sir
Richard had found himself in the hollow position of playing Mæcenas
without the price, and rather than change his pose and his manner of
life had borrowed twenty-five thousand pounds four years before from an
elderly peer, who combined philanthropy and what some declared to be
usury with a high degree of success.
There were those who hinted that this eminently respectable aristocrat
robbed Peter more than he paid Paul, but Lord Gordon Russell was a man
with whose reputation it was not safe to take liberties. The next year
Mortmain had renewed his note, and, in order to save his famous
collection from being knocked down at Christie's, had borrowed
twenty-five thousand more. The same thing happened the year after, and
now all three notes were three days overdue.
Sir Richard responded to the announcement of the little Sèvres clock by
pressing a button at the side of his desk, which summons was speedily
answered by Joyce.
"My fur coat, if you please, Joyce."
"Very good, sir." Joyce combined the eye of an eagle with the stolidity
of an Egyptian mummy.
Mortmain arose, stepped to the fire, rubbed his thin, carefully kept
fingers together, then seated himself at the piano and played a few
chords from the overture. As he sat there he looked anything but a
bankrupt upon the eve of suicide--rather one would have said, a young
Italian musician, just ready to receive and enjoy the crowning pleasures
of life. The thin light of the heavily shaded lamps brought out the
ivory paleness of his face and hands, and the delicate, sensitive
outline of his form, as with eyes half closed and head thrown back he
ran his fingers with facile skill across the keyboard.
"Your coat, sir," said Joyce.
Mortmain arose and presented his arms while the servant deftly threw on
the seal-lined garment, and handed his master his silk hat, gloves, and
gold-headed stick.
"I am going for a short walk, Joyce. I shall be back by seven. You can
reach me at the club, if necessary."
Joyce held open the door of the study and then hurried ahead through the
luxuriously furnished hall to push open the massive door at the
entrance. On the threshold Mortmain turned and, looking Joyce in the
eye, said sharply:
"Why did you let that fellow Flaggs follow you to the door of my study,
instead of leaving him in the hall?"
"I beg pardon, sir," replied the servant, "but he slipped behind me
afore I knew it, sir. He was a rum one, anyway, sir--a bit in liquor, I
fancy, sir."
Mortmain turned and passed out without reply. He hated intruders and had
not liked the way in which Flynt had calmly received the clerk in his
private study. On the whole, he regarded the solicitor as presuming.
It was dark already and the street lamps glowed nebulously through the
gathering fog. The air was chilly, and a thick mealy paste, half sleet,
half water, formed a sort of icing upon the sidewalk, which made walking
slippery and uncomfortable. Few people were abroad, for fashionable
London was in its clubs and boudoirs, and the workers trudged in an
entirely different direction.
The club was but a few streets away, and it was only ten minutes after
the hour when he entered it and strolled carelessly through the rooms.
No one whom he cared particularly to see was there, and the fresh, if
bitter, December air outside seemed vastly preferable to the stuffy
atmosphere of the smoke-filled card and reading rooms. Therefore, as he
had nearly an hour before it would be time to dress, he left the club,
and, with the vague idea of extending his evening ramble, turned
northward. Unconsciously he kept repeating Flynt's words: "The death of
Lord Russell or your own." Then, without heed to where he was going, he
fell into a reverie, in which he pondered upon the emptiness and
uselessness of his life.
At length he entered a large square, and found himself asking what was
so familiar in the picket fence and broad flight of steps that led up to
the main entrance of the mansion on the corner. A wing of the house made
out into a side street and presented three brilliantly lighted windows
to the night. Two were empty, but on the white shade of the third, only
a few feet above the sidewalk, appeared the sharp shadow of a man's head
bending over a table. Now and then the lips moved as if their owner were
addressing some other occupant of the chamber. It was the head of an old
man, bald and shrunken.
Mortmain muttered an oath. What tricks was Fate trying to play with him
by leading his footsteps to the house of the very man who, on the
following morning, would ruin him as inevitably and inexorably as the
sun would rise! A wave of anger surged through him and he shook his fist
at the shadow on the curtain, exclaiming as he had done in his study
half an hour before, "Curse him!"
"Ain't got much bloomin' 'air, 'as 'e, guv'nor?" said a thick voice at
his elbow.
Sir Richard started back and beheld by the indistinct light of the
street lamp the leering face of Flaggs, the clerk.
"Tha'sh yer frien' S'Gordon Russell," continued the other with easy
familiarity. "A bloomin' bad un, says I. 'Orrid li'l bald 'ead! Got'sh
notes, too. _Your_ notes, S'Richard. Don't like 'im myself!"
Mortmain turned faint. This wretched scrivener had stumbled upon or
overheard his secret. That he was drunk was obvious, but that only made
him the more dangerous.
"Take yourself off, my man. It's too cold out here for you," ordered the
baronet, slipping a couple of shillings into his hand.
"Than' you, S'Richard," mumbled Flaggs, leaning heavily in Mortmain's
direction. "I accept this as a 'refresher.' Although you've never given
me a retainer! Ha! ha! Not so bad, eh? Lemme tell you somethin'. 'Like
to kill 'im,' says you? Kill 'im, says I. Le's kill 'im together. 'Ere
an' now! Eh?"
"Leave me, do you hear?" cried the baronet. "You're in no condition to
be on the street."
Flaggs grinned a sickly grin.
"Same errand as you, your worship. Both 'ere lookin' at li'l old bald
'ead. Look at 'im now----"
He raised his finger and pointed at the window, then staggered backward,
lost his balance, and fell over the curb along the gutter. In another
instant a policeman had him by the collar and had jerked him to his
feet. The fall had so dazed the clerk that he made no resistance.
"I 'ope 'e didn't hoffer you no violence, Sir Richard," remarked the
bobby, touching his helmet with his unoccupied hand. "Hit's
disgraceful--right in front of Lord Russell's, too!"
"No, he was merely offensive," replied Mortmain, recognizing the
policeman as an old timer on the beat. "Thank you. Good night."
The baronet turned away as the bobby started toward the station house,
conducting his bewildered victim by the nape of the neck. Without
heeding direction, Mortmain strode on, trying to forget the drunken
Flaggs and the little bald head in the window. The clerk's words had
created in him a feeling of actual nausea, so that a perspiration broke
out all over his body and he walked uncertainly. After he had covered
half a mile or so, the air revived him, and, having taken his bearings,
he made a wide circle so as to avoid Farringham Square again, and at the
same time to approach his own house from the direction opposite to that
in which he had started. He still felt shocked and ill--the same
sensation which he had once experienced on seeing two navvies fighting
outside a music hall. He remembered afterwards that there seemed to be
more people on the streets as he neared his home, and that a patrol
wagon passed at a gallop in the same direction. A hundred yards farther
on he saw a long envelope lying in the slush upon the sidewalk, and
mechanically he picked it up and thrust it in the pocket of his coat.
Joyce came to the door just as the hall clock boomed seven. Sir Richard
had been gone exactly an hour.
"Fetch me a brandy and soda," ordered the baronet huskily, and stepped
into the study without removing his furs. The fire had been replenished
and was cracking merrily, but it sent no answering glow through Sir
Richard's frame. The shadow of the little bald head still rested like a
weight upon his brain, and his hands were moist and clammy. He thrust
them into his pockets and came into contact with the wet manila cover
of the envelope, and he drew it forth and tossed it upon the table as
Joyce entered with the brandy.
The butler removed his master's coat and noiselessly left the room,
while Mortmain drained the glass and then carelessly examined the
envelope. The names of "Flynt, Steele & Burnham" printed in the upper
left-hand corner caught his eye. The names of his own solicitors! That
was a peculiar thing. Perhaps Flynt had dropped it--or Flaggs. He turned
it over curiously. It was unsealed, as if it had formed one of a package
of papers. The baronet lifted the envelope to the lamp and peeped within
it. There were three thin sheets of paper covered with writing, and
unconsciously he drew them forth and examined them. At the foot of each,
in delicate, firm characters, appeared his own name staring him
familiarly in the face. In the corners were the unmistakable figures
£25,000. He rubbed his forehead and read all three carefully. There
could be no doubt of it--they were his own three notes of hand to Lord
Gordon Russell. Fate was playing tricks with him again.
"A fire from heaven to consume the notes," Flynt had said. Here were the
notes--there was the fire. Had Heaven perhaps really interposed to save
him? Was this chance or Providence? With a short breath the baronet
grasped the notes and took a step toward the hearth. As he did so the
extension telephone by the mantel began to ring excitedly. His heart
thumped loudly as, with a feeling of guilt, he relaid the notes upon the
table and seized the telephone.
"Yes--yes--this is Mortmain!"
"Richard," came the voice of a friend at the club in anxious tones, "are
you there? Are you at home?"
"Yes--yes!" repeated the baronet breathlessly. "What is it?"
"Have you heard the news--the news about Lord Russell?"
Mortmain's head swam with a whirl of premonition.
"No," he replied, trying to master himself, while the perspiration again
broke out over his body. "What news? What has happened?"
"Lord Russell was murdered in his library at half after six this
evening. Some one gained access to the room and killed the old man at
his study table."
"Killed Lord Russell!" gasped Sir Richard. "Have they caught the
murderer?"
"No," continued his friend. "The assassin escaped by one of the windows
into the street. The police have taken possession. There is nothing to
indicate who did the deed. There was blood everywhere. His secretary, a
man named Leach, was discharged two days ago and a general alarm has
been sent out for him."
"This is terrible," groaned Sir Richard in horror.
"It is, indeed. I thought you ought to know. I may see you at the opera.
If not--good night."
The receiver fell from the baronet's fingers, and the room grew black as
he clutched at the mantel with his other hand. He staggered slightly,
tried to regain his equilibrium, and in so doing upset one of the bronze
dragon vases which grinned down upon him.
The vase fell, and the baronet clutched at it in its descent. It was too
late. The heavy bronze crashed downward to the floor carrying Sir
Richard with it, and one of the verdigris-covered dragon's fangs pierced
his right hand.
Mortmain uttered a moan and lay motionless on the floor. The little
Sèvres clock ticked off forty seconds and then softly chimed the
quarter, while the blood from the baronet's hand spurted in a tiny
stream upon the rug.
[Illustration: "Mortmain . . . lay motionless on the floor."]